Of Phones and Tones
by dragon dreams
Summary: John was curious if Sherlock's phone had other personalised tones, much like that lascivious text tone Irene Adler had put in it. Johnlock if you squint.


Ah, my first fic after a long, long time. Thank you BBC for inspiring me! Sherlock is yours, crack-fic is mine.

The first time I heard that sound, it almost put me off my breakfast. It had certainly done a number on Mrs. Hudson's sensibilities. It was such a lascivious cross between a sigh and a moan. A female moan. It had made even Mycroft uncertain for a moment.

Of course I tried my outmost to make Sherlock spill the beans on why that particular sound was currently punctuating our conversations.

"Why does your phone make that noise?" I asked.

"What noise?" he asked back, the git.

"That noise, the one it just made."

"It's a text alert, means I've got a text." And there went the sarcasm meter hitting eight.

"Your texts don't usually make that noise," I pointed out, trying to be logical.

Sherlock sighed an irritated sigh. "Well, somebody got hold of the phone and apparently as a joke, personalised their text alert noise."

"So every time they text you…"

"It would seem so."

I frowned at him. "See, I'm wondering who could have got hold of your phone. It would've been in your coat."

"I'll leave you to your deductions."

"I'm not stupid, you know."

"Where do you get that idea?" Sarcasm meter hitting a perfect ten.

Should've known better than to outwit the master of sarcasm. No wait, that'd be Mycroft. Sherlock would have to be the prince of sarcasm then.

Damn, but Sherlock was even more close-mouthed than usual about Irene Adler. With him being like that, there was no way in heaven or hell that I would be able to get straight answers from him.

So I did the next best thing, I started counting the instances when I would hear that sigh/moan tone. And in the middle of counting I started getting curious. Surely, Sherlock had allowed that tone to stay in his phone because of some form of sentiment. However much he abhorred the word and denied its existence in his life. Had Irene Adler changed some other settings in Sherlock's phone? Or had Sherlock personalised the other numbers in his phone instead? Would the ringtone for Mycroft be "God Save the Queen?" I knew the regular text alert tone for Lestrade, but had it been changed, too? These thoughts niggled in my mind until I could no longer stand it. I wanted to check out Sherlock's phone just to verify my theory.

Of course, this was Sherlock's phone so it wasn't something that I could easily get a hold of, much less inspect. There was just no opportunity for me to do that. And he certainly would not readily hand it over to me if I politely asked for it. I could just picture his sneer if I said, "Sherlock, could you just hand over your phone for a moment? I want to see what other tones are installed in it."

However, one particularly cold afternoon in February, I had the perfect opportunity to look through Sherlock's phone. Our laundry had just been delivered back to us and I went into Sherlock's room to give him his clothes when I noticed that he was in the bathroom and his phone was in the middle of his bed. It was just lying there, unusually silent.

Well I wasn't going to waste this chance. I quickly dumped his clothes on the bed, grabbed the phone, unlocked it (thank God he still didn't use a lock code for it), and browsed through the phone's directory. I was surprised to find only three numbers in it: mine, Mycroft's, and an unnamed one, which was probably Irene Adler's. I hit that number and surfed through the profile to the message alert tone. A loud sigh/moan erupted from the phone. I quickly returned to the directory and hit my number to see what profile had been assigned to me.

I was just hitting the key for the ringtone when I heard a dangerously low voice say, "What the bloody hell are you doing with my phone, John?"

Both of us startled when Sherlock's voice started screaming, "Pick up the phone, it's John calling! Pick up the phone, it's John calling! Pick-up the—"

Sherlock wrenched the phone from my hand and quickly stopped the noise emanating from it.

Could you say awkward moment? Very awkward. We stood there, not looking at each other, surrounded by a sudden silence that was deafening. I felt that I ought to apologise because I knew this was my fault. Still—

"You recorded yourself—?" I began.

Sherlock made an odd noise at the back of his throat. "Yeah, well…"

He tossed the phone to the bed and began arranging his laundry. It was then that I noticed that he only had a towel wrapped around his waist. Beads of water were tracking wet trails down his body. He smelled terrifically of soap, shampoo, deodorant, and, well, Sherlock. And the heat from his recent shower was emanating from him like a billowing cloud.

My eyes began to roam all over the room again.

"Uhm…so, I was just, uhm, you know, curious…" I said. "Because of the tone, you see."

"What tone?" Sherlock asked.

He'd recovered easily enough. He seemed his calm and detached self once again.

"You know, the one from Irene Adler," I clarified.

"Oh, that. Well." Sherlock shrugged, beginning to put his shirts in his closet.

Ahaaa. So he was going that route then. He knew I was really itching to say sorry for going through his phone. I mean he would use mine anytime he wanted to, but I wasn't really that kind of a person. I did respect his privacy. He knew that. And so he was just going to wait me out until I babbled out my apologies. This made me angry somehow. Unfortunately I also had a sinking sensation that our conversation would end up with me gibbering my apologies, as he had planned.

Sherlock finished putting his clothes away. He finally looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "Well?" he asked, putting a finger on the towel wrapped around his waist.

I swallowed. "Well…uhm…"

"You've satisfied your curiosity, haven't you?" he said, smirking. "Now, unless you want to satisfy your curiosity about what my arse looks like, I suggest that you leave my room and allow me to put my clothes on."

Right," I said, nodding. "Of course...err..."

"Now would be best," he said, his smirk widening, taunting.

I hurried out, my eyes automatically sneaking a quick peek at said cloth-covered arse. But right before I closed his door, I had another crazy idea. I quickly took my phone out and sent a blank message. Inside the room I heard a sound that perhaps was a more lascivious cross between a (very male) moan, an erotic groan, and a needy sigh.

"John!"


End file.
